ABSTRACT

In John Keats’s Isabella; or the Pot of Basil (1820), Isabella’s mercantile brothers plot to murder her suitor, their clerk Lorenzo, for spoiling their plans to marry her to ‘some high noble and his olive–trees’. Having invited him for a day of hunting in the local forests, ‘the two brothers and their murder’d man’ (XXVII) head out – an epithet admired by Charles Lamb, and much afterwards, for Keats’s skill in narrative anticipation. Lamb’s praise was published in a review of the 1820 volume, reprinted in The Examiner, 30 July, 494-5. This appreciation is on page 494. On page 495, just below the review, is a report of ‘Executions’ at Newgate prison. One of the condemned is a ‘black man’, William Wilkinson, who insisted that he was framed and convicted on flimsy testimony, protesting that ‘he was a murdered man, and that he should die innocently’. This was an accidental discovery on our part, but once discovered a magnetic curiosity. Our essay examines what Lamb calls Keats’s ‘wonderfully conceived’ epithet, in the capital contexts of Keats’s day, most especially in reports in The Examiner and other newspapers. Making no claim for allusion on Keats’s part, or for Lamb’s admiration of this epithet, we shine an unexpected light on the urgent currency of this epithet, a potent rhetorical alliance among victims of ‘judicial murder’, and its new cast on economic power and tyranny in Isabella.

摘要

在约翰济慈的伊莎贝拉；或罗勒罐(1820)，伊莎贝拉的商人兄弟密谋谋杀她的追求者，他们的职员洛伦佐，因为他们破坏了将她嫁给“一些高贵和他的橄榄树”的计划。邀请他在当地森林里打猎一天后，“两兄弟和他们被谋杀的人”（XXVII）出发了——查尔斯·兰姆（Charles Lamb）钦佩的一个绰号，后来又因为济慈在叙事预测方面的技巧而钦佩他。兰姆的赞美发表在 1820 年卷的评论中，转载于The Examiner，7 月 30 日，494-5。这种赞赏在第 494 页。在第 495 页，就在评论下方，是一份关于纽盖特监狱“处决”的报告。其中一名被定罪的人是“黑人”威廉·威尔金森，他坚称自己是因站不住脚的证词而被陷害和定罪的，抗议“他是一个被谋杀的人，他应该无辜地死去”。这是我们的一个偶然发现，但曾经发现了一种磁性的好奇心。我们的文章在济慈时代的首都背景下，特别是在《考官》的报告中，考察了兰姆所说的济慈“构思巧妙”的绰号和其他报纸。不要求济慈的典故，或兰姆对这个绰号的钦佩，我们意外地揭示了这个绰号的紧迫性，一个“司法谋杀”受害者之间强有力的修辞联盟，以及它对经济权力和伊莎贝拉的暴政。